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Topic: A Doorbell and Alert System all in One (Read 10331 times)

Hello all, I have been trying to find out how to implement a simple and inexpensive voice capability on my Vera Lite so that in the event an alarm is triggered - e.g. Smoke Alarm or Front Door Unlocked, in addition to an email or text message, an alert is announced throughout the house. I finally have that installed and it is working wonderfully - here is how I did it: My initial intent was to install an Aeon Labs Gen5 Z Wave Doorbell. This device has 2 components: A Battery Powered Button (transmitter) which is installed outside and a plug in receiver which is plugged into any wall socket. It is this second unit which comes with 6 ringtones (all MP3 files) that proved to be the key to my audio messaging system. (an important note here - when installing this unit, the orientation of the transmitter unit is critical for the receiver to be activated - if you are not getting the bell to ring, try different orientations - I had to experiment and now it is working very well).

OK - so after everything was working well, I enrolled the doorbell unit onto Vera and verified that all was OK there.

My next step was to create message files. Using my PC I created as many messages as I needed (which included everything from nice salutations to loud Klaxon alarms), and saved each separately, in MP3 format. I then unplug my Doorbell receiver unit and connected it to my PC using the USB cable supplied. After the unit was recognized by the PC, I transferred all of the MP3 files that I had created to the receiver. Then with the file folder still opened on my PC, I sorted all of the files in that folder by DATE - and made a numbered list of their order with 1 being the oldest file. I then made sure that I properly dismounted the receiver from my PC so that files were not lost.

Then after plugging the receiver back into the wall at its original location, I opened Vera and in Devices found the Doorbell and under the advanced tab, wrote down the number that was on the AltID line - which I would have to use in the next step.

I then edited the Scene that I had created many months ago, where I wanted the voice message e.g. the scene that alerts me when the temperature in the house goes below 50 degrees, to be placed. I then went to the page in the Scene that allows me to enter an LUUP Code and pasted the following: luup.call_action('urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:ZWaveNetwork1','SendData',{Node='Y',Data='112 4 6 1 X'},1)

I then substitute for X (on the line above), the number-serquence of the date-sorted MP3 and substituted for Y (in the line above) the AltID that I had recorded, in the previous step. For example if the Water Altert Message was the 8th file in the MP3 list and the AltID that I recorded was 35 ... the above code looked like:

That's all there was to it - after I saved that Scene I tested the results and it worked perfectly! And so for the price of the Doorbell, I was able to implement a robust voice messaging system at no additional cost!

After I type in my text, I play "Julie's voice" in turn and use Nero Wave Editor - in the "record what you hear" mode (but any PC recording program should work fine), to capture "her" messages; which I then save in MP3 format before transferring them to my Aeon Doorbell unit. (note: while the file is in the Wave Editor program, I use this opportunity to add any Klaxon, warning alerts or introductory chimes to enhance the message).

One change to my Instructions: I stated in my initial post that the MP3 files, transferred into Aeon unit's memory, and the corresponding reference number in your LUA code should match (e.g. the third file should be entered as 3 in your LUA code). I have since found that this is not necessarily true ... for some reason, the order that the messages are displayed in the unit's memory card, do not always correspond to the number that has to be entered on the line of code. To resolve this - I simply created a new "temporary" scene in which I placed only the LUUP statement, above. Then after: I entered a number into the code's line, saved, and activated the scene, I listened to which message was played and associated it with the number currently in the code. I then changed the number - and played the scene again, repeating until all of the messages were assigned to their correct numbers. A bit heavy handed - but it worked.

Hello all, I have been trying to find out how to implement a simple and inexpensive voice capability on my Vera Lite so that in the event an alarm is triggered - e.g. Smoke Alarm or Front Door Unlocked, in addition to an email or text message, an alert is announced throughout the house. I finally have that installed and it is working wonderfully - here is how I did it: My initial intent was to install an Aeon Labs Gen5 Z Wave Doorbell. This device has 2 components: A Battery Powered Button (transmitter) which is installed outside and a plug in receiver which is plugged into any wall socket. It is this second unit which comes with 6 ringtones (all MP3 files) that proved to be the key to my audio messaging system. (an important note here - when installing this unit, the orientation of the transmitter unit is critical for the receiver to be activated - if you are not getting the bell to ring, try different orientations - I had to experiment and now it is working very well).

I know the delay portion of a scene can be used to reactivate the announcement every 15 minutes and you can place a ton of 15 minute delay triggers into the scene which is making the announcement (but this is brute force). If the sm 103 switch has a locked/unlocked sensing capability you might be able to set the scene to play only when the door is unlocked - using a conditional statement before the announcement LUA code (e.g. If <sm103 unlocked> then <LUUP Code>) - but that is only conjecture since I have not used the "If-Then" ability of this code - and I really have to learn that (this is a note to myself really). What I will do (as soon as the mob leaves from our place - ((Holiday Family)), is look into this and get back to you). If you figure this out yourself, in the interim, I would like to know how you did it.

Very Cool!! I got mine to work. But I was wondering what the other numbers mean after Data? I know the 8 means the 8th mp3 file but what does 112 4 6 1 all mean? Is one of them volume? If not, how can I set the volume? Where can I read about these variables? Thanks!

I was able to find the information about what each position in the Data Portion of the line of code means. I did not figure this out myself - but instead went to this link http://www.airedalez.net/?p=287 where Airdale (a senior forum member) had figured the information out. The following is a cut and paste of what he had placed on the page in the link above:

Data: There are 5 values to send, and some are static.

112 (Never Changes): This is the Command_Class_Configuration ZWave Command4 (Never Changes): This is the Configuration_Set Zwave Command6: Parameter Number ? Different options to execute on the device.1: (Does not change for these options) ? Size2: Configuration Value ? Change doorbell ringtones, volume, etc?You are mainly concerned with changing the parameter value and the configuration value. Here are the options to execute on the device:

It took me a long while to change from 5 to 7 since UI5 was working very well and I'm from the school of "if it ain't broke - don't fix it", but in March when the First Alert ZWave fire alarms became available - they could only be installed with UI7, (at least initially), so I made the switch. And I am happy that I did - I found UI7 to be very user friendly; and it has a section within each scene, where LUUP code can be added very easily.

Sorry for my rambling answer to your question - but I wanted to give you some background.